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Nuke Power? Themal Solar!
Sep. 28th, 2007 09:44 amI am sort of on the fence about Nuke Power. I used to be strongly against it, but now I realize that 20 years later computer controlling systems are much better, there are much better designs (including one that can lose cooling for 24 hours and still not melt down), and dealing with the waste has gotten better.
However yesterday I learned about Thermal Solar. What is Thermal Solar, you ask? Well, see, the sun is really hot. Really, really hot, see? And that’s where you get the term “thermal”. Ok, you didn’t need that much detail... let me start over.
Solar panels work by using these silicon devices that turn light into electricity. This is different.
Coal plants work by heating water, which turns to steam, and the steam pushes a turbine which generates electricity.
Thermal Solar is when you point tons of mirrors at a huge tower with water in it, this gets hot enough to make steam, and then the steam pushes a turbine which generates electricity.
Here’s the neat thing. A nuke plant requires a certain amount of real-estate for the plant plus more for security. That same amount of space, if used for a Thermal Solar plant, would generate 10x the power.
A 100x100 mile^2 tract of land in Nevada would generate more electricity than the US currently uses. You know how Alaska gets so much tax revenue from the oil companies that it pays citizens to live there? Well the desert states could end up in the same arrangement. Heck, we could become an exporter of energy to other countries. Plus, the company that gets good at building these can put them up in third-world desert counties and bring all sorts of goodness to them.
It costs about 14 cents/watt, and coal is 3 cents/watt. However, the way they do Thermal Solar right now is on a small scale. Doing it larger would bring the cost down considerably.
So I’m thinking... find a 100x100 mile square in Nevada that is owned by the federal government and make it happen. But a few small plants to learn what you are doing, optimizing each one until you are at 2 cents/watt; I’m sure by the time you assembly-line the process to build plant after plan there will be tons of optimizations. For example, once you get the process down you can be hiring cheaper, less skilled labor for construction instead of PhDs and researchers; etc. etc.
The more I think about this, the better it gets. The jobs it creates are relatively clean jobs: construction, physical repair and maintenance, and electrical control engineers; not dangerous mining or oil-rigging jobs.
The only problem is, “what about at night?” Well, we use less electricity at night, so we should be able to cover that by using some coal, some stored-energy technologies (maybe someone will invent something better once there is a big need), plus we could find a 100x100 mile^2 area in the east-coast timezone and that would power the west-coast morning.
However yesterday I learned about Thermal Solar. What is Thermal Solar, you ask? Well, see, the sun is really hot. Really, really hot, see? And that’s where you get the term “thermal”. Ok, you didn’t need that much detail... let me start over.
Solar panels work by using these silicon devices that turn light into electricity. This is different.
Coal plants work by heating water, which turns to steam, and the steam pushes a turbine which generates electricity.
Thermal Solar is when you point tons of mirrors at a huge tower with water in it, this gets hot enough to make steam, and then the steam pushes a turbine which generates electricity.
Here’s the neat thing. A nuke plant requires a certain amount of real-estate for the plant plus more for security. That same amount of space, if used for a Thermal Solar plant, would generate 10x the power.
A 100x100 mile^2 tract of land in Nevada would generate more electricity than the US currently uses. You know how Alaska gets so much tax revenue from the oil companies that it pays citizens to live there? Well the desert states could end up in the same arrangement. Heck, we could become an exporter of energy to other countries. Plus, the company that gets good at building these can put them up in third-world desert counties and bring all sorts of goodness to them.
It costs about 14 cents/watt, and coal is 3 cents/watt. However, the way they do Thermal Solar right now is on a small scale. Doing it larger would bring the cost down considerably.
So I’m thinking... find a 100x100 mile square in Nevada that is owned by the federal government and make it happen. But a few small plants to learn what you are doing, optimizing each one until you are at 2 cents/watt; I’m sure by the time you assembly-line the process to build plant after plan there will be tons of optimizations. For example, once you get the process down you can be hiring cheaper, less skilled labor for construction instead of PhDs and researchers; etc. etc.
The more I think about this, the better it gets. The jobs it creates are relatively clean jobs: construction, physical repair and maintenance, and electrical control engineers; not dangerous mining or oil-rigging jobs.
The only problem is, “what about at night?” Well, we use less electricity at night, so we should be able to cover that by using some coal, some stored-energy technologies (maybe someone will invent something better once there is a big need), plus we could find a 100x100 mile^2 area in the east-coast timezone and that would power the west-coast morning.
